They attack youth music and life Death guides them
It rushes into streets into theaters and cafes Terror breaks our arms
I don’t really know where to start with my body’s pain
What kills them kills me
What strikes them strikes me
And words die away in my throat like riddled bodies in the night
Translated from French by Thierry Gillybœuf
They killed…
They killed human beings who loved life who drank love and dreamt of travelling the world hand in hand
They killed human beings who found a friendly shoulder in the morning coffee a fiery yearning in the midday cigarette and an Oriental carpet in their nights’ music
They killed human beings who sang in three languages (one for everyday life one for poetry one for love) because life unties numbers
And so for them black coffee is a hole in the ground cigarette a fire setting the world ablaze and the carpet a shroud woven in Palmyra ruins where they would never go
Translated from French by Thierry Gillybœuf
For Bruno Doucey, born in 1961 in the Jura Mountains, poetry is an art of hospitality, "a journey through which we blend our cultural and human heritage to build a new art of living together", a resistance that leads to the light. After managing the publishing house, Editions Seghers, he founded in 2010 a publishing house dedicated to the defense of world poetry and militant values. But he is also a novelist, most often trying to revive great figures of murdered poets such as Max Jacob (Le carnet retrouvé de monsieur Max, Ed B. Doucey, 2015), Marianne Cohn (Si tu parles Marianne, Editions Elytis, 2014), Victor Jara (Victor Jara, non à la dictature, Actes Sud Junior, 2008) Federico Garcia Lorca (Federico Garcia Lorca, non au franquisme, Actes Sud Junior, 2010) and the Kabyle singer Lounès Matoub, (Lounès Matoub, Non aux fous de dieu, Actes Sud Junior, 2018). Two of his collections, S’il existe un pays and Ceux qui se taisent, have appeared at Éditions Bruno Doucey (2013 and 2016), while L’Emporte-voix has just appeared at La Passe du Vent. He is also master of work of Le livre des déserts (Robert Laffont, 2005) and author of L’aventurier du désert (Elytis, 2010). According to René Depestre, in the preface of Poèmes au secret (Le Nouvel Athanor, 2007), Bruno Doucey is « a surveyor of the solar expeditions of sand and wind ".